Chen Ning and Clifford A. Reiter, A Cellular Model for 3-Dimensional Snow Crystallization, Computers & Graphics, 31 (2007) 668-677.

Snow crystals are intriguing because they exhibit both symmetry and remarkable diversity. Previous studies have used 2-dimensional models to approximate snow-crystal growth. Here generalizations to three dimensions are considered. In particular, a cellular arrangement of cells is updated according to local rules that involve the identification of receptive cells and averaging values from non-receptive sites. The cellular arrangement is the same as the configuration of water molecules in ice that occurs under ordinary conditions on Earth.

See also: · Some Images and animations related to the paper [Images and Other Materials] · A quasi-crystalline version: [Abstract] [Images and Other Materials] · A hexagonal version: [Abstract] [Images, and Animations] [Preprint] · Some Boolean variants: [Abstract] [Images, and Animations] · Some Fuzzy variants: [Abstract] [Images, and Animations]